Mark Souder: “first I will join with those praising our chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), who stuck with this through…”

“first I will join with those praising our chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), who stuck with this through good times and tough times, as well as the ranking Democrat on the committee, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), because it has really been a struggle at times, and then, as has been pointed out here, there are things we agree on. Whatever the court in the end rules on I believe is guessing, and I believe they will rule to uphold the Constitution, but every Member of this body, Republican or Democrat, has a stake in making sure that this count is as complete as possible within our districts, because if the court rules, as I think they will, that you cannot guess and you have to have a real count, everybody needs to make sure that their count is actual and does not miss the hard-to-reach population. If it is going to be estimated, the estimates will come off of a real count, because ultimately that is how estimating is done as well. So it is important that every Member get directly involved in every aspect of this. My office has, unfortunately, been involved on a couple of points early on that shows the difficulty of doing the census and why every Member should be paying attention. Fort Wayne, Indiana, has undergone an aggressive annexation program, unlike many other cities. The Census Department still does not have the right maps in the hands of our counters.”